What the Nanny Saw Read Online Free

and that her opinion was valuable. It was only yesterday after the argument over the table that she realized that her presence meant they could avoid discussion about the one subject really worth debating. Was what the papers were saying about Nick true?
    After a few minutes Ali had concurred with Bryony. Not because it was easier—disagreeing with Hester was far more difficult—but because it was right. She pointed out that most of the snatch shots were taken by photographers after midday, when the sun no longer blinded their vision. Then she offered to make absolutely sure that the curtains were kept closed, to prevent anyone from seeing what was going to take place in the dining room the following morning.
    This meant primarily preventing the seven-year-old twins, Hector and Alfie, from opening the curtains. Since the scandal had broken two weeks earlier, the twins had longed to be photographed so that their picture would appear in the paper and they could show their friends at school how famous they had become. Ali didn’t have the heart to tell them that it was a futile exercise because they probably wouldn’t be going back to their school in Kensington in September and they had dropped to the bottom division in the playdate league.
    Foy, on the other hand, actively encouraged their plan. He helped them draw up elaborate strategies for sneaking into the dining room and hiding under furniture until the room was empty and they could stand in full view of the windows. He bought them World War II Commando comic strips and showed them The Great Escape for inspiration. He encouraged them to stockpile supplies around the house.
    So Ali would find rotting apple cores and biscuit wrappers underneath the walnut tallboy and empty cartons of orange juice stuffed down the sides of chairs. Bryony didn’t care. Beyond meetings with an interior decorator when a room needed overhauling, Bryony never had more than a functional interest in her surroundings. And although Ali played the role of the enemy in the twins’ game, she was more like a double agent, because it cheered her to see them happily distracted from the crisis. It compensated for the fact that most nights they crept into her bed at the top of the house, and some mornings she woke up to find the sheets sopping wet.
    The two older children were more complicated. Initially, Izzy’s phone had buzzed with interest. Her excitement at being the center of attention had rapidly diminished as she absorbed the implications of what was happening around her. Quite often Ali would find her sitting at the kitchen table, reading newspaper stories about her parents. She soon stopped returning text messages. Ali encouraged her to go out and meet friends, but Izzy dreaded running the gauntlet of photographers outside the front door, in case they took a picture of her.
    Jake was a different proposition. Since he had come home from university, he came and went as he pleased. Apart from Ali, no one seemed to notice what he was up to. He had stopped referring to his father from the moment the first stories appeared in the newspaper. Once, as she was getting up with the twins, she had bumped into Jake coming up the stairs on his way to bed. He was standing unsteadily in the middle of the landing.
    “He did it, Ali,” Jake said, gripping her arm so tightly that she could see the blood drain where his fingers were wound round her wrist. Ali peeled his hand away.
    “We don’t know anything for sure,” she tried to reassure him.
    “He was never honest,” Jake insisted. “You know that.”
    “He was always good to me,” said Ali.
    “You’re as deluded as the rest of them,” whispered Jake.
    •   •   •
    How would she keep the twins occupied today? Ali wondered. She needed to get them out of the house. The next-door neighbors had initially seemed willing to allow them safe passage over the garden fence, through their basement, and out the front door, where they could escape